India: Cockroach party denied permission to protest in Delhi

As the Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) ramps up its call for a protest march in New Delhi on October 10 over alleged voter roll manipulation, the youth-led movement has accused India’s authorities of mass detentions of its members.

CJP spokesperson Deepak Baliyan and activists from across the country were among those arrested, CJP leaders said in a series of social media posts on Thursday night.

Baliyan was released later in the evening after being arrested by Rajasthan police at his house, CJP Co-Convener Ashutosh Ranka said on X on Friday.

Ranka claimed that at least 10,000 people were detained country-wide on Thursday.

CJP founder Abhijeet Dipke alleged on X that a group of the movement’s volunteers from the state of Telangana were arrested by Madhya Pradesh police onboard a train in Bhopal.

The movement earlier said that a group of students from the western Indian city of Pune who were headed for the planned protest in Delhi were also detained. The CJP said they were being taken on a bus to an unknown location.

There have been no police statements on the alleged detentions so far.

Cockroach movement describes detentions as ’emergency’

Leaders of the CJP have railed against the alleged mass arrests, likening the situation to a “state of emergency.”

“Why not just declare EMERGENCY?”, Dipke said as he reacted to a video of the students from Pune purportedly being detained.

The last time an emergency decree was issued in India was under former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi in the mid-70s. Emergency powers were applied by the Congress leader for 21 months, with civil liberties being suspended, most of the opposition being jailed and media censored.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) calls the period  a “dark chapter” in India’s history.

Another prominent CJP spokesperson Saurav Das accused the Modi government of being “at war with its own young citizens.”

“Hello India. We are under a State of Emergency,” Das wrote on X.

CJP’s Abhijeet Dipke set to arrive in Delhi on October 10

Meanwhile, founder ‘Cockroach’ Dipke has said that he will land in Delhi on Saturday and march to Jantar Mantar.

“This intimidation is not going to work, Modi. The youth of this country are no longer scared of you,” Dipke said.

Thousands are expected to converge at the capital’s Jantar Mantar protest site on Saturday to participate in CJP’s protest demanding the resignation of Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar over a controversial revision of voter lists.

Jantar Mantar served as ground-zero for the viral online Cockroach movement’s debut protest in July which culminated with the resignation of the then-education minister.

The CJP, opposition parties and their student units have been holding near-daily demonstrations against Kumar.

Around 130 million names have been removed from electoral rolls under an exercise called Special Intensive Revision (SIR).

Opposition leaders and critics say that those struck off the lists include a huge number of minority voters.

They accuse Modi’s BJP of using the exercise as a tool to secure future electoral gains, questioning the independence of the Election Commission of India (ECI), which is overseeing the exercise.

The ECI and the BJP deny the allegations.